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7/05/2006

Six trends driving the future of libraries

Wired Mag (one of my favorite monthly reads) has a great piece on Six Trends Driving the Global Economy. Simply substitute the phrase”global ecomony” with “future of the library” and there’s some great food for thought here. Here’s a brief recap of the six trends…

People Power: Blogs, user reviews, photo-sharing – the peer production era has arrived.

Video Unlimited: Any time, any place, any format, any screen – there’s always something on.

Personalize it: Jeans cut just for your hips, drugs designed just for your genome. The new me decade is a perfect fit.

Carbon Killers:Hug that tree- For some companies, going green is generating serious greenbacks.

Buy It Now: Forget old-school R&D. These companies purchase their ideas one startup at a time.

All Access Ecomony: Closed systems are dead. From software to supply chains, open is the new standard.

Here are some of my thoughts …

Are libraries harvesting this wealth of peer production capabilities and user generated content? I think we’re just beginning to …

Is your library offering downloadable video yet? Is you library keeping up bandwidth demands that this format demands? We all know users want it … how are we supplying or helping to fulfill this information need?

We heard this over and over from our users in our website focus groups – users want control of their options and they want it personalized to their needs.

PLCMC’s latest building project, ImaginOn, was the city’s first “green building” to earn LEED certification. I wonder are other communities asking this from their library building projects as well?

I think we’re starting to see lots of partnering and positioning by library vendors to do the same. This item made me wonder how many offers LibraryThing has already entertained. I for one hope they never sell out, but rather continue to push the idea of what online catalogs can become.

I am totally amazed by LibraryThing and believe that Dynix's days are numbered. How can our library have an inventory management system that is extraordinarily open to user content? Can they be integrated? And is it too late to catch up? How did we get so far behind?

Very Interesting parallel. As a school librarian I constantly have to justify my existence or out I go and out goes my budget. Therefore, if my customers don't see a demand for me than I'm gone. These ideas that you've posted a great for me to see what I need to do to stay afloat. Thank you!